


something quite right

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Awkward Dates, Coulson needs to sort out his feelings, Daisy is patient, Developing Relationship, F/M, First Kiss, Future Fic, Happy Ending, Romance, casual mention of Fitz dying, confused Coulson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 15:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6710680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson knows why Daisy really left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	something quite right

By the time they see each other again, eighteen months later, her hair is as long as when he first met her. He’s assaulted by a flash of memory: the bold girl stepping out of her van - her only real possession, her only _home_ \- and joining his team. He remembers Skye, and there was nothing uncomplicated about Skye but sometimes he feels himself longing for the days of Skye.

At least he had her in his life.

Some on the team thought she left because of Lincoln.

Some assumed it was guilt over Fitz’s death.

The day she left she told Coulson she was grateful and touched, but then she kissed his cheek, low, close to his mouth, so there was no confusion left about why she was really leaving.

He had tried to give her what she needed but apparently couldn’t give her what she wanted.

Now they meet in a crime scene Daisy and her team have sneaked into illegally.

“May and Andrew got married again,” he says, and it’s one of the first things he says and he’s not sure why.

Daisy smiles.

“I know,” she replies. “I talk to Andrew often. I sent them a gift basket.”

He had no idea she had been in contact with Andrew, and feels a little betrayed by it. But she probably asked Andrew not to tell him, because she knew Andrew would respect her wishes. And Daisy and Andrew, they had gone through some stuff together, it’s natural she didn’t exactly cut all ties.

Just with Coulson, apparently.

They talk about the case.

“It’s important for Inhumans to investigate their own crimes,” she says. She’s guarded by a tall Asian guy and a petite, older black woman, whom she instructs to search the room. Both Inhuman Coulson supposes. Something about them - not that you can tell who is Inhuman by sight, but something about the tension in their bodies, the way they look over their shoulders. A mistrust. Yeah.

Coulson understands the need for Inhuman to take care of they own when they stray. The world can always change its mind and go back to drawing up laws to lock them up, and Daisy knows this. She’s an expert on PR.

“This is the third victim,” Coulson tells her.

She nods. “I know. I just don’t know how he avoids detection.”

He disappears, maybe changes his face. Goes through walls? They talk about it over takeout diner in Daisy’s borrowed office, sitting together on the cold floor. She moves from town to town, he guesses. Coulson is the only one of the team on this mission and she asks about the others but only in passing. He wonders if she doesn’t miss them at all. Eighteen months is a long time. Enough for her hair to grow like this. Enough for a new life.

“We’ll turn him over to SHIELD, if we catch the culprit,” Daisy tells him, amicably, and he believes her. “But I need my team to be seen turning him over to the authorities. You understand?”

Coulson nods.

“Can I tell the team I saw you?” he asks, knowing she’s operating in semi-hiding right now.

“Of course,” she says. She dips a french frie in her milkshake. Coulson hopes she doesn’t eat like this all the time, delicious as this is. 

He doesn’t want to talk about why she left, because he has no way of fixing it, and Daisy doesn’t seem interested in having a heart to heart either. Coulson is not as sure as he was when he said those words, all those months ago, thinking they would help her heal. He’s not sure he could repeat them today.

Her hair has no trace of the old dye job. He remembers running his fingers through it as he held Daisy _afterwards_ and told her how much she meant to him. Her face had flushed with distaste - which Coulson mistook for loyalty to her real family, but it wasn’t that.

He leaves the case in her capable hands, knowing she’ll keep her promise and share any new lead with SHIELD.

“Thanks for paying for dinner,” she tells him when they say goodbye, a bit awkwardly. He remembers her goodbye kiss in the hangar. She doesn’t touch him now. “I have to repay the favor sometime.”

“Yeah, sometime,” Coulson repeats, not sure if he wants to hope.

 

+

 

Four months later they meet on the field, Istanbul, going after the headquarters of a new organization who took over after Hydra collapsed.

Daisy’s hair is in a tight ponytail and she’s growing out her fringe again, it seems.

Like in the previous mission they are both after the same target. A lab that experiments with tissue extracted from Inhumans. Daisy has the details on the operation but not the manpower (she seems to be without her team this time) to take it down. SHIELD can help with that, Coulson tells her.

She offers to buy him a beer afterwards - SHIELD being a legitimate law-enforcing organization means he can leave the clean up to foot soldiers and local authorities. They come out of it with a couple of bruises and a little too much adrenaline and Coulson has this artificial happy feeling just by being by Daisy’s side when she kicks some bad guys’ ass.

“We make a good team,” she says, openly, honestly and it makes Coulson ache with longing.

They disappear into the back of the room, where it’s quieter, and he feels like he needs to say something he should have said the last time they saw each other.

“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he tells her. “If I made you walk away.”

“I told you, I was touched by what you said,” Daisy replies. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I feel like I did.”

“Then stop feeling like that,” she admonishes.

He finds the tone comfortingly funny and they smile at each other.

They sink into the leather couch of a busy, lively pub. She looks like a seasoned agent, a woman of the world. Coulson wonders what he was trying so hard to protect her from. He drinks his beer and becomes morose, reflecting how, on top of everything, he must have offended her, professionally.

Daisy touches his hand.

“I know you told me because I had just lost something so important - even if it wasn’t real. But I also know you really felt that way.”

“I did, I mean-” _I do_. Right? Coulson feels a strange pressure on his chest.

Daisy gets up and pays for another round, patting his shoulder. She seems to know her way around the bar, though she has never been here before. That’s Daisy for you, he guessed. He never seemed to be able to catch up. And he wanted to. Were his words another way of keeping her by his side? A boss, a friend, you can easily leave behind (and she did). Family not so much. Coulson wonders if he had been selfish with her.

Of course he didn’t feel like that at beginning, or for a long time. He even had a little crush on the idealistic hacker who kept pushing him to do better, be better. But he started growing increasingly uneasy about the crush, as if he were betraying Skye by seeing her like that. It stopped soon, especially after she got shot (because of him).

He just wanted the world for her. He wanted to be whatever she needed. He had convinced himself he could - that for once he wasn’t insufficient, inadequate, unimportant. He had wanted to matter to her.

“What I said… I thought that’s what you wanted,” he confesses.

“It was,” she admits. “But it turned out it wasn’t from you.”

Her eyes look a bit glassy and she sounds a bit drunk.

“It’s no one’s fault,” she shrugs, resigned, resting her head slightly on Coulson’s shoulder. “It’s life.”

He feels her breath of his neck, the closeness of her, and it makes everything harder. What she said to her two years ago felt like something he was meant to say, to feel. This new, confused, stinging, achy feeling… he knows he’s not supposed to feel that. He wraps his arm around Daisy’s back, squeezing her shoulder, smelling danger and beer and cheap soap on her. He doesn’t know if this - being this close to her again, but not in the way he always imagined they were close, once he forced himself to put a label - should feel right or wrong. He knows for a moment it feels good.

At the end of the night she goes back to her hotel and Coulson goes back to the Quinjet.

 

+

 

Three weeks after Istanbul they meet again.

There is no mission this time.

She is wearing her hair in an elegant bunch, to go with her black dress, the kind of long gown Coulson has never seen on her. She looks so different. He guesses that’s the idea and he feels a pang of guilt, because he immediately knows what Daisy is trying to do.

“This is a nice place,” Coulson comments, wondering if she can afford it.

“I told you I’d repay the favor,” she says, as they are being led to a beautiful dining room with high-ceilings.

 He tries to hide his discomfort as they sit down, but he fails. Daisy smiles and tries to delfate the whole thing. Which means this is probably extremely important to her.

“It’s okay, I’m not going to try to seduce you,” she tells him, smiling. But something in her smile falters. “I just wanted to try it, how it feels, a date with you.”

Her voice is full of longing. It makes Coulson feel like such an asshole, on top of everything. It’s one thing to have lost her - and that hurt, every day - but it’s a sin to make her feel worthless, unwanted.

“And I wanted to clear the air,” she adds.

“Ah.”

“But food first.”

She encourages him to order luxuriously but Coulson still worries that she’s spending her own money on this. SHIELD has gone back to having some cash to spend on travel expenses but he thinks that, after Daisy came up with this whole evening, she wouldn’t take his offer to pay too well.

He orders quail and Daisy follows his lead. The champagne is sweet and wonderful. There’s a band playing smooth jazz. This is like one of Coulson’s dream dates. Except he’s with Daisy.

“Coulson, I get you, I understand. I saw you as a father figure sometimes, too,” she says and Coulson gives her a surprised look. “Of course I did. It was natural. I was an orphan, you were caring and you believed in me and you seemed to care if I lived or died and-”

“And I was older.”

She nods. “And you were older. But you were also handsome and funny and a pain in the ass.”

He smiles. “A pain in the ass?”

“Girls like that,” she says, throwing him a flirty smirk. “And yeah, sometimes when I was lonely or afraid I tried to put you in that box, like you were the family I never had, because I felt I needed it. But that’s not what I wanted and there were these others times…”

She bites her cheek.

“Tell me.”

“Well, sometimes I just wanted to kiss you. You messed me up.”

“I’m sorry,” Coulson tells her. He can’t say that the idea of Daisy wanting to kiss him isn’t flattering… or intriguing. And he’s ashamed to say that he wants to know the details.

“It’s okay,” she says. “You’re by far the nicest guy I’ve ever fallen for. Which of course was part of the confusion.”

“Why?”

He doesn’t know why but he’s really anxious to hear her feelings, as if that could help him untangle his. Mainly he just wants to hear her speak, forever. He’s missed her, her voice, her words and her stories and this is the first time they have ever talked about relationships (outside her jabs at Rosalind and his horrifying interrogation about Ward that Coulson regrets to this day, helpful as it was) but he just wants to hear more.

The dessert arrives.

It’s some sort of glorified black forest gateau. This whole place is pretty fake, overpriced but of course Daisy can’t tell the difference between it and the real thing.

“That’s fancy,” she comments. She planned this date based on what she thought Coulson would like but it’s obvious she’s never been in a place like this herself.

“Why was me being nice part of the confusion?” he presses her.

She drops her gaze a bit, just enough.

“I’m just not used to thinking that someone who makes me happy can be a potential romantic partner, that’s all.”

“That’s horrible,” Coulson exhales, out of his control.

“Yeah. But that’s me, not you.”

But still, he feels his heart break for her. If only for that he is willing to give her whatever she needs or wants from him, just to show her that she deserves someone who makes her happy. That love should be that - for her at least. Looking at her list of past choices, Miles, Ward, Lincoln, he can see the pattern and it bothers him. Coulson doesn’t have much in the way of romantic ideals anymore but he thinks Daisy should aim higher than someone who makes her miserable.

Over coffee she changes the subject to mission talk, which a lot more like her.

A lot more like him.

She tells him of the struggles the Inhuman community are facing, her hopes for the future, and her expectations that SHIELD will help make them possible. Coulson doesn’t ask if she is ever coming back to the team. She’ll tell him if she is, when she chooses to do so. Two years without her have taught Coulson to be patient.

They have also taught him to doubt himself.

That’s not exactly new but…

Daisy can sense his reluctance to say goodnight at the end of the evening.

She presses her palm against the lapel of his suit (one of the expensive ones, and he remember he was actually nervous when he chose it, taking longer than he should have, dressing up).

“Look, I promise that I won’t run away again,” she tells him. “And I’ll be in your life if you want. That way you can sort out your feelings without any pressure or feeling like you need to let me get in your pants to keep me. You don’t, you really don’t..”

She sounds so mature about it. Coulson has never really had to sort out of his feelings before. His feelings have never been worthy of getting sorted out before. This thing, this complicated thing with Daisy makes him realize how shallow his whole life has been. His jealousy of Andrew and May, from the beginning, because he knew he didn’t have anything like that. He didn’t feel anything like that. And he wasn’t likely to ever feel it.

Until...

“Daisy…” he says, touching a strand of hair that got loose throughout dinner. Amazed at all the things she makes him do and think and feel. He was so ordinary before she showed up. With ordinary feelings. “You messed me up too,” he tells her, the words so ridiculous and out of character, but he can’t think of another way to put it.

She smiles a bit.

Then she kisses his cheek, low, almost on the corner of his lips.

 

+

 

He calls her two days after their date.

“Maybe something a little more private this time?” he suggests.

They meet up at a SHIELD safehouse in the city. A bit bare but quiet and almost cosy. Small. Coulson cooks. He thinks she would like that. She brings the wine. It’s cheap but nice. Daisy’s hair spills over her shoulders, and she’s comfortably dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, like she didn’t really give it a second thought. They talk while he cooks. They talk shop at first - the last two days haven’t been precisely uneventful for SHIELD. Coulson shows her the bruise on his wrist, from a suspect that got away. He got quite the scare and it got him thinking that he might not have much time, and maybe he should go after what he really wants (he doesn’t tell Daisy this last part).

It’s almost… domestic. Even though they have never done this before. And Coulson knows they would have probably never done this, if Daisy hadn’t walked away in the first place. But there’s a kind of familiarity here, something that makes Coulson happy and confused, just preparing dinner together and talking about work like this, drinking wine and making bad jokes. It’s new. It feels right. 

When they sit down to eat Daisy seems surprised at his choice of food, which Coulson was counting on.

“I was expecting something more sophisticated than pasta, but I love it.”

“It’s the first dish my mother taught me how to cook,” he tells her. He knows it will instantly grab Daisy’s attention. He never had that with anyone else (except maybe Audrey but in her case that was justified, she was his girlfriend), someone who is eager to hear everything about him, as if every detail of his life was precious to her. “We tweaked the recipe together over the years. It was our thing.”

She tries it.

“Well, you and your mom came up with something really nice.”

“The only love I’ve ever known is family, and you, Daisy, you are my family, you will always be,” he says and watches her face fall a little because she thinks she’s being rejected again. “But lately I’ve been thinking that maybe that’s not incompatible with what you want. Maybe the opposite.”

She nods, but she takes his words with calm. “We’ll talk about that after dinner,” she says. “Now tell me more about you and your mom.”

He does. He hasn’t spoken about his family in years, maybe decades, not in detail. He tells her why he feels more comfortable in a kitchen than anywhere, because it was their place, his mom’s and his. Where they could be together and talk over food before he had to go to school or she had to go to work. He tells her his mother didn’t smoke much but she always smoke in the kitchen and there were mornings when Coulson would wake up and go to the kitchen for coffee and it would smell of cigarettes and he would know his mom had been there, staying up late, smoking and worrying about bills or shifts or how she was going to pay for his college.

He tells Daisy tiny, inconsequential things he hasn’t thought about in years and she listens and looks at him with those big eyes of hers. Those kind us which had always been able to unravel Coulson, from day one.

When he puts away the dishes she touches his elbow and says “thanks” and Coulson knows it’s not about the food.

They talk about SHIELD and Inhuman some more once they get to the couch, after dinner. Then Daisy takes the glass of wine away from him and puts it down of the coffee table. She grabs his hand and touches his bruised wrist with care, pressing on the purple-ish skin gently, her expression like she’s heartbroken he got hurt. Coulson swallows, very much aware that no one has touched him like that in a long time. He squirms in his seat, affected by it. More than he wants to be, considering it’s Daisy (considering what he said to her once).

Then Daisy rests her hand on his collar and gives Coulson a questioning look, offering a way out. He doesn’t pull back when Daisy presses her mouth to his, knowing it’s a line they can’t exactly uncross. The world doesn’t end. It’s nothing earth-shattering, just a nice kiss that melts into a second one, Daisy a bit more assured this time, leaning over so that her knee is pressed against Coulson’s thigh and her hands are on his chest. She guides him, brushing her lips against his softly, no tongue yet, just the insinuation of it. She moves one hand to his cheek, cupping his face as she drops a couple of quick kisses on him.

“Does this feel wrong to you? You can tell me if it does,” Daisy says.

Coulson swallows, suddenly feeling almost too shy to put it into words. “No, not wrong at all.”

He is feeling a lot of contradicting things right now, but he doesn’t feel like he’s doing something wrong. Two years ago this might have been different.

Daisy seems encouraged by his words and wraps her fingers around the back of his neck, pulling him in, bringing his mouth to his for a proper kiss this time. Coulson helps, opening his mouth under his and letting her explore with her tongue. She runs her hands over his arms, pressing her body closer to him. And Coulson wants to do more, do something that will make Daisy feel worthy and desired and happy. It’s all he’s ever wanted, in the end - and it doesn’t matter what word he uses for it, what label, he still wants that above all.

But he is nervous, almost to the point of shivers, like a teenager trying out his body for the first time. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, or how hard he should kiss back. Luckily Daisy is patient and careful. In fact she is so careful with him that it reminds Coulson of one of his first boyfriends, a boy older than him who treated him with such gentleness that it made Coulson’s sexual experiences with other people seem rough and unpleasant for years afterwards. That’s how Daisy feels - gentle beyond words. It touches him more than he can explain and he tries to hide the embarrassing intensity of his emotions right now by kissing Daisy back.

That doesn’t work because kissing Daisy just rises more emotions in him and when she sucks his bottom lip between hers Coulson lets out a noise, somewhere between a sigh and moan, and something inside him bucks under the weight of it all, and he finally lets go.

She pulls back with a satisfied but uncertain smirk.

“Good, right?”

“Yeah, good,” he mutters, trying to take some initiative and caressing her neck.

It settles him, knowing that Daisy doesn’t expect more of him tonight. And he knows that maybe he won’t be able to give himself fully to her for a while. Maybe that’s just fine, and maybe that’s going to be nice, getting there together, the process of it. Part of him still feels like he’s going against the natural order of things - the same part that convinced Coulson that he should fight to give Daisy a family, whatever it took.

“I might need a bit of practice,” he says, fingers playing lazily with the hair on the back of her neck.

She raises her eyebrow. “Oh yeah?” she says like he is a cad and this is a challenge (bold, always bold Daisy) and she kisses him again, scraping her nails across his neck.

He’s not completely lying here, or using a cute line. He still has to get used to it, used to his own feelings after pushing them down for so long. Or who knows? Maybe he really did see Daisy as a daughter, but her leaving and then raising all these questions, pushing him like she always did. Maybe he’s just changed his mind. It doesn’t matter much, he’s not going to worry about the how or why. Instead he _chooses_ to focus on the fact that, for all the weirdness, kissing Daisy doesn’t feel wrong at all, and in fact it’s beginning to feel… quite right.


End file.
